We’ve just launched a redesign of one of our long-time clients, Nstyle Fashion Xchange. They first signed up way back when I was doing all the design work. We’d tweaked their design a couple of times since then, but this is the first time they’ve had a complete make-over.
Compare this to my original design from back in the day, and you’ll be glad I’m not doing the design work anymore:
Well, in the very, very early hours of this morning, we launched our new website’s design. It had been a traditional “shoemaker’s children” type problem, where our quality of websites and design in generally has continuously improved over the past year, but our site stayed the same because we were busy work on other people’s websites and print design.
After putting it off for much too long, we all pitched in and worked really hard these last couple of weeks to get our site done. And it’s really paid off.
Take a look above at our old site on the right compared to our new site on the left, and you’ll see what I mean about our drastic increase in skill over the last several months. Although the website we designed for ourselves at the beginning of last year was solid, it was no longer reflective of our collective capabilities.
Major kudos goes to Dave, who spent hours and hours working on the site, getting it done phenomonally fast while still doing an outstanding job. And to Eric, who still plans to redo much of the coding his boss threw together to get the site online quicker. Eric, please don’t cry when you start looking at my code.
Please, take a look around. We would love any feedback on the new design.
Can you tell I’m a little stuck on logos lately? Our job here at T&S is to help businesses put their best foot forward on the web. Unfortunately, bad logos tend to work against us in that regard. We have to come up with creative ways to use logos we’re not fond of in a design we are fond of. Our designers, Emily Spirek and Dave Roach, do a great job.
However, let’s assume that you’ve decided you want your business to have a new logo, but you have it on so much material that it would be cost prohibitive to create a new one. Here’s a simple solution.
Replace it everywhere you don’t have to spend extra money, then on one thing at a time where you do have to spend money.
At the very beginning, replace it on your website, documents that you print directly from your computer on an as-needed basis, etc. Then you should probably replace it on your business cards as well. If you have a storefront with a sign, that should be your next stop.
If you use professionally printed letterheads, labels, envelopes and other items, consider temporarily printing them yourself on your computer until you can afford to replace all the items.
An alternative is to simply get the logo redesigned, then calculate how much it will cost to switch everything over and start saving up. That way you can wait and just switch everything over at once.
If you like your new logo much more than your old one, you’ll probably find yourself saving the money that much faster.
We often run into clients who we think should redo their logo, and they frequently resist the change for one reason or another. More often than not, they created it themselves and put a lot of hard work into it.
Now, I have no doubt that if you made the logo yourself, you put a lot of work into it. And it was probably fine for a period of time. But if you’re serious about building your business, you need a good logo.
So if you made your logo yourself, or if someone else has told you they think it looks unprofessional, email a dozen people or so and see what they think of the logo. Clients and customers would be ideal if you have some whose opinion you trust. Email them something that they can reply to quickly and easily. Here’s a possible message.
I’m thinking about creating a new logo for my company. I’ve attached my existing logo to this email. Do you think I should replace it or keep the existing one?
That’s it. Keep track of the responses. If most of the people think you should redo your logo, then do it! Make sure this time you use a professional or logo creation software.